Back in December 2011 the US government first lied, then grudgingly had to admit that Iran had seized one of its RQ-170 Sentinel drones, which crash-landed in the middle of the country, after Iran released a video showing its scientists attempting to reverse engineer the contents of the drone. Naturally, the US politely asked for its drone back, and just as naturally, Iran politely refused to comply. So what was Iran doing in the intervening 14 months? Hacking the drone of course, which it finally succeeded last night when it released a short clip of what it had supposedly extracted from the remains of the Sentinel. The full clip is below, and while it does not provide any incremental informational benefits to Iran, or any further humiliation to whoever created the US drone fleet without a self-destruct option, it certainly will boost Iranian morale on the ground for hacking the Great Satan.

The video aired late on Wednesday on Iranian TV shows an aerial view of an airport and a city, said to be a US drone base and Kandahar, Afghanistan. The TV also showed images purported to be the Sentinel landing at a base in eastern Iran but it was unclear if that footage meant to depict the moment of the drone’s seizure.

In addition, the TV also showed images of an Iranian helicopter transporting the drone, as well as its disassembled parts being carried on a trailer.

In another part of the video, the chief of the Revolutionary Guard’s airspace division, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, said that only after capturing the drone, Iran realised it “belongs to the CIA.”

“We were able to definitively access the data of the drone, once we brought it down,” said Gen Hajizadeh.

He described the Sentinel’s capture as a huge scoop for Iran, saying that at the time, Tehran did not rule out a possible punitive US air strike over the drone.

We for one can’t wait the algo buying explosion on expectations of the global GDP boost that would result from a US attack to finally reclaim its property and avoid such additional embarrassment in the future.